No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Dorsey Comment: A Modest Retrogression
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2017
Extract
It seems to me, with all respect, that the Comment by Professor Dorsey exhibits a minimum understanding both of the contemporary world and of the theory and intellectual procedures recommended by Harold Lasswell and his associates for inquiry about the role of international law in that world. Certainly Professor Dorsey and Lasswell and associates observe very different worlds, have very different conceptions of international law, and recommend very different methods of inquiry. It is not clear that Professor Dorsey is constrained by empirical observation and modern scientific methods of inquiry.
- Type
- Agora: Mcdougal-Lasswell Redux
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society of International Law 1988
References
1 Dorsey, G. Beyond the United Nations: Changing Discourse in International Politics and Law (1986)Google Scholar [hereinafter Book].
2 Book at 31.
3 We are tempted to ask: Did anyone ever see a “nation-state” “coming and going” or “buying and selling” or “looking and listening”? Dorsey, The McDougal-Lasswell Proposal to Build a World Public Order, supra at p. 41, 42 Google Scholar [hereinafter Comment].
4 Id. at 43.
5 Id. at 42.
6 Id. at 47.
7 Book at 4.
8 The citations offered by Professor Dorsey are ample.
9 Expansion and documentation of the description offered in this paragraph may be found in Mcdougal, M. S. & Reisman, W. M. International Law Essays (1981)Google Scholar, and Mcdougal, M. S., Lasswell, H. & Chen, L. Human Rights and World Public Order (1980)Google Scholar.
10 Extended description of the global process of effective power is offered by McDougal, , Reisman, & Willard, The World Process of Effective Power: The Global War System, in Power and Policy in Quest of Law: Essays in Honor of Eugene Victor Rostow 353 (M. S. McDougal & W. M. Reisman eds. 1985)Google Scholar.
11 These recommendations are stated in some detail in the article attacked by Professor Dorsey. See also the citations referred to supra note 8.
12 The relevant global processes are described in these terms in great detail in M. S. Mcdougal, H. Lasswell & L. Chen, supra note 9.
13 In chapter 4 of McDougal, Lasswell, and Chen, id., we document that this postulation is rapidly becoming customary international law. In later chapters of the book, we illustrate how the postulated policies may be, and are being, applied to a variety of particular problems.
14 In his Comment, supra at p. 48, Professor Dorsey refers to our postulated goal of “egalitarian- democratic human dignity” as having a “nonempirical premise.” A postulation that makes a designative reference to interactions between human beings in the shaping and sharing of values is scarcely nonempirical.
15 Lasswell indicates some of the difficulties in describing culture, and the interrelations of culture and personality, in Person, Personality, Group, Culture, 2 Psychiatry 523 (1939). Professor Dorsey is confronted with especial difficulties because of the miraculous powers he attributes to culture. His conception bears some resemblance to the community “geist” of the historical jurists of the previous century.
16 Comment at 47.
17 Id. at 50.
18 Id. at 46.
19 Book at 92.
20 Id. at 89.
21 Id.
22 Id. at 93.
23 Id. at 96.
24 Comment at 51.
25 McDougal, & Lasswell, The Identification and Appraisal of Diverse Systems of Public Order, 53 AJIL 1, 4 (1959)Google Scholar.
26 Id. at 28.